“My work is not artistic, but social and civil. I don’t want to interpret, I want to tell“, So he spoke of himself Gianni Berengo Gardin, one of the greatest Italian photographers of the twentieth century, who died at the age of 94 in Genoa.
His images know about everyday and ordinary, never leaving out the dignity and humanity of every face in person he photographed. And to a country, Italy, which has seen change through the discreet eye of its camera.
He was born in Santa Margherita Ligure, in the province of Genoa, in 1930, but considered Venice his true hometown, taken his first steps with the camera.
And right here, with the support of FAI, the important reporting report on the passage of large cruise ships in Venice exposed in 2015 (and Milan in 2014). An exhibition that attracted many controversies from the municipal administration, which referred its opening.
Monsters in Venice, Berengo Gardin’s visual story
The large ships are monsters twice long in Piazza San Marco, twice tall Palazzo Ducale, and endanger the health of Venice – said the photographer in an interview. In addition to visual and atmospheric pollution, with their size they create waves and currents that weap the delicate foundations of the city. Not to mention that an accident could occur like the one that happened in Genoa in 2013. If one of these horizontal skyscrapers were to slam on Palazzo Ducale, on San Giorgio or on the tip of customs, we would have lost millenary buildings forever.
They are twice long Piazza San Marco and high once and a half Palazzo Ducale: the new “visitors” of Venice are …
Posted by Fondazione Forma for photography on Sunday, June 7, 2020
Monsters in Venice It collected 27 photographs taken between 2012 and 2014
Another way, that of Berengo, to keep faith with his civil commitment.
Who was Gianni Berengo Gardin
Gianni Berengo Gardin was one of the most important Italian photographers of the twentieth century. He began his career in 1954, publishing his first photos in the weekly The worlddirected by Mario Pannunzio, with whom he collaborated until 1965.
From 1966 to 1983 he worked for the Italian Touring Club, creating numerous volumes dedicated to Italy and Europe. At the same time he collaborated with the De Agostini Geographical Institute and has produced reports and monographs for some of the largest Italian companies, such as Olivetti, Alfa Romeo, Fiat, Ibm and Italsider.
For about thirty years he has documented Renzo Piano’s architectural projects with his photographs. His works have been exhibited in internationally important events, including Cologne Photokina, the 1967 Montreal Expo, the Milan Expo 2015, the Venice Biennale and the exhibition The Italian Metamorphosis, 1943-1968 At the Guggenheim Museum in New York in 1994.
In 2016 the Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome dedicated the exhibition to him True photography. Reportage, images, meetingswith over 250 photographs. In 2022 it was the turn of Maxxi with the retrospective The eye as a jobwhile the exhibition and the catalog came out in 2023 Things never seenwith unpublished shots.
Among the numerous awards received:
His photographs are part of the collections of prestigious museums, including the Maxxi and the Central Institute for the graphics of Rome, the Moma of New York, the Biblothèque Nationale and the European Maison of La Photograpie in Paris, the Musée de L’Elysée of Lausanne and the Reina Sofía Museum of Madrid.
Currently, until September 28, the National Gallery of Umbria in Perugia hosts the exhibition Gianni Berengo Gardin photographs Giorgio Morandi’s studyedited by Alessandra Mauro. The exhibition presents 21 shots made in 1993 to document the study of the Emilian painter, on the occasion of the opening of the Morandi Museum in Bologna.
Photo © Alessio Jacona
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